


quantum libet

by recryption



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Body Horror, Bugs & Insects, Character Study, Disease, Gen, Unhealthy Relationships, Unsanitary, anyway the corruption is the entity of lovecore. no i will not elaborate, gdov and mature tags bc of the body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:46:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26248162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recryption/pseuds/recryption
Summary: John Amherst has always been a desperate man.(in other words: the crawling rot, the filth, the everpresent corruption inside us all, is all-knowing, all-consuming, and, of course, all-loving.anyway, doesn't everyone say that true love should be transformative?)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 14





	quantum libet

**Author's Note:**

> i know i know i know i said it in the tags but i want to warn again for corruption-typical gross body horror and graphic depictions of insects/decay/etc. like i am basically waxing poetic here about the literal embodiment of revulsion and disgust and rot. there's also really weird undertones about toxic relationships and stuff so. <3 thank you please be careful

The first dream is the worst.

(he remembers it all -- too -- fondly --

when he first crossed the line between Who He Was and Who He Could Become.)

There is the skittering of thousands upon thousands of legs; the hot and heavy buzzing of flies laying eggs in his broken-marionette body; the hypnotic movement of maggots squirming under his skin, moving the limp limbs of his corpse; and of course, this crippling _disappointment_ that overshadows everything else as he waits for Death, looming above him, clad in black, to claim him at last.

_Well._

_I've been betrayed, again._

_I suppose I shouldn't be surprised._

The pulsing hum of the flies drown out the rest of his thoughts, though, and as he stares up at that merciless skull, it's all that he can do to suppress his smile _._ Of course, of course it'd all be wrong, of _course_ he'd fall prey to ancient blasphemies and stupid, false, _fake_ magic that promised eternality against all odds. Of _course_ the filth that he'd let into his home couldn't fill that crushing emptiness within him, no matter how entrancing the heady, sickly smell of mold and rot had been at the end of it all, no matter how much it crooned and whispered and sang sweet promises into his ears --

The disillusionment helps him find his voice.

"Does it hurt?" he asks.

Death cocks its head -- quizzically, bemusedly, almost sardonically. It daintily steps around the rot that seems to be seeping all-too-quickly into the wooden floor underneath his unmoving body. " _You_ are the one dying," it replies. "I am simply Death."

"I don't feel it, quite yet. Will I?"

Death merely bends down, takes him by the hand, makes to pull him to his feet --

And then a wave of sudden, utter revulsion rushes through the being and it drops his limp body to the ground and a peal of cynical _laughter_ bursts from his chest because _of course,_ of course even _Death_ couldn't stand to be around the corpse of --

"John Amherst," it says, incredulously, like it can't quite believe its own words. "What have you _done_ to yourself?"

"Tell me, Death," John asks, slowly, dragging out his words. "Does it hurt?"

Death stands there, staring at him for a long, long minute, a minute that stretches out for hours, days, centuries in that shuttered flat, dark and damp with mold and decay from a resident that'd trapped himself there for longer than he'd ever care to admit.

"No," it finally responds, and John feels a sudden, throbbing heat rush into his head. The maggots crawling under his flesh start moving in shapes, fractals, organized traffic -- each one a part of a greater whole that John can see starting to form on the edges of his vision -- he grasps at that illusion as it reflects and refracts upon itself thousands of times over, through a fly's kaleidoscopic eyes --

"Not for you."

\---

John Amherst wakes up.

(slowly, though. not all at once.)

He can feel each individual part of his body moving involuntarily, individually, almost imperceptibly, and he struggles to consolidate them into the singular whole of Who He Can Become. The twitch of a finger. The flutter of an eyelid. The slip of his tongue as he tries to wet his dry lips.

John Amherst wakes up, opens his mouth, and flies pour out of his wet, rotting insides and flood his apartment building and he drowns in those skittering legs for a second, two, before he can feel the worms and ants inside of his chest force his stuttering heart to beat and his deflated lungs to pump and he forces himself up onto an elbow so that he can retch onto the half-rotting floor underneath him. Fly larvae squirms in the diseased, yellow-green froth that spills from his lips and he watches them with a sick, sick fascination, his thoughts cloudy, his skull stuffed with cotton, and the maggots _wail_ and he can hear them all crying out to him like they _trust_ him and before his mind catches up with his body he's already fumbling with the lid of the icebox, shoveling food onto the ground, only half-noticing that everything he touches turns into blackened, rotting sludge that the maggots practically revel in.

John Amherst wakes up in the grip of the Filth and he thinks, joyfully, that _this is it_.

John Amherst wakes up and listens to the singing of the sated flies as they swarm the mess that he'd created, thanking him for what he'd done, and he thinks that _I am no longer alone._

John Amherst wakes up, tears apart the pitifully human explanation for his death he'd felt so compelled to write, opens his apartment door, and the wooden stair railings crumble and rot just in his presence and he thinks _I know Who I Can Become and that man can prove themselves worthy of -- of --_

John Amherst wakes up, walks out the front door of his apartment complex, takes a bow, and exits stage right. _Exeunt -- finis -- au revoir._

\---

(statement of kostya mironov, regarding multiple apartment complexes that burned to the ground in the summer of 1862. original statement given 13th september 1862. audio recording by jonathan sims, head archivist of the magnus institute, london.

statement begins.

flies. there were so many flies. all i remember from that summer is the sound of the buzzing of flies. i swear to god, even if you were just walking down the street -- god forbid you tried to get into one of the buildings, for how infested they were, jesus christ -- they would be on you in _seconds_. and not to mention that they were the most fearless flies i'd ever seen. you smacked one away, and a dozen more took their place. we used to joke that it was obvious whenever somebody had just come from the direction of the infestation because they would be absolutely coated in those nasty bloodsuckers, trying to get into their nose and mouth and laying eggs on whatever food they could get their grubby little hands on.

it was horrible. even the entomologists -- and i swear on it, even scientists came down trying to figure out what had sparked the whole thing -- found it odd, because apparently they were all a specific breed of blow flies that only showed up when there was rotting meat around? but the couple exterminators and fumigators that got their way in there couldn't find anything. and by that, i mean, like, the buildings were literally empty, even though there were entire families living in those flats before the infestation took over.

it was almost like the flies and ants and maggots had eaten everything -- every last scrap of food and furniture that'd been left in there. kind of strange, right? especially when -- and get this -- the whole thing corresponded with the disappearance of some office worker who lived in one of those apartments. his name was john amherst, i think. i wasn't close with him -- i mean, nobody was, the guy was kind of a weird creepy recluse and all of his neighbors hated him because there would always be weird smells coming from behind his door and he'd never even bothered to reply to a single one of the complaint letters that he got. i swear to god, his downstairs neighbors were getting ready to call the police because of a weird, yellow stain that'd appeared on their ceiling in the shape of a _body._ like, i dunno if he was -- killing people or what, but the fact is that he disappeared and then all of these flies took his place.

eventually, they called the kennedy pest control company to try to fumigate the whole place, or go through it and find the source or whatever, i don't remember that too clearly. i mean, they failed, obviously. not like a whole bunch of other exterminators hadn't already failed. but the landlords didn't wanna give up on the place, i guess? because, well -- it's a whole building, which kind of makes sense?

they had to in the end, though. not because they chose to -- but because a group of people straight up burnt the whole street to ashes. i don't know how they did it without getting caught, but they did. i got to see it when it was at its highest point and i swear, i could hear the flies themselves screaming. i don't know if i imagined it, or not… but i mean, if there were that many flies in there, all of them in pain, i guess it would make sense that their voices would be… amplified, i guess? because, y'know, you crunch one fly and you don't really hear anything -- but then if you crunch a whole _bunch_ of flies at the same time -- you might hear a chorus like what everyone heard when the street burnt down, that day.

i had to move. i mean, it wasn't that big of a deal -- by that point, the infestation had gotten so bad that basically everyone had already moved. i slept on my friend clarence's couch for a bit, before they kicked me out -- apparently because i had this weird smell on me that they couldn't stand. they were always complaining. it was something like... burning rubber, rotting flesh, and sun-baked roadkill.)

\---

The second dream comes almost as a surprise.

He follows the Rot wherever it deems fit to take him -- to the abattoirs (with its workers like bees and its produce like breeding-grounds), to the hospitals (where doctors and nurses and patient-prey rush around like termites, fueled by atavistic instinct and the constant rush of the ER), to the rhythmic march of the military schedule, where every cog has a place, where every man is nothing more than an ant under their Queen of a supposed _purpose_ \--

The infestation in all of these lonely men is almost painful to watch. The unkempt gravediggers, hiding their shadows of melancholy under their masks of infectious happiness, have it the worst.

John thinks -- if only they knew that the Rot grows inside them, that the Rot loved-loves-will-love them for longer than any pitiful human love can last -- but the oddly stiff way he moves and the way the flies cluster around him seem to ward the rest of them off from listening to his spiels and speeches and buzzing voice. Even though he's always left alone he knows that he is never truly _alone._ The other men cast looks of revulsion towards him when he holds a corpse or a coffin for too long, when an insect crawls over his food and he hardly even blinks, but John practically preens himself under the attention because at least he's still _there,_ still _existent,_ still _acknowledged_ by the others, thinking always _if only, if only, if only they knew._

"Private Amherst!"

John looks up, staring at the man that'd called out to him from across the open grave he's digging. He peels back his lips in a poor facsimile of a smile. "Can I help you?"

"You really shouldn't be out here," the man says, staring at John, and John is suddenly acutely aware of the feverish heat pulsing in his head, the dizziness that threatens to send him tumbling to his feet, the heavy weight of the flies landing in his hair and on his clothing like they're practically ready to bring him back to the Hive that he's desperate to deem himself worthy of. "I mean -- I apologize for my interruption, but you look to be quite…"

"It's the typhoid," John says, matter-of-factly, and the doctor jumps, startled. "I'm very much aware."

"Then why are you still working?" He beckons John impatiently away, too afraid -- too _disgusted_ \-- to get closer to his wonderfully-diseased body. "Come now. You'll get the others infected as well."

"Is that all so terrible, really?" John asks, his fake smile morphing into one that's very, very real.

"Why, of course it is!" the man protests. "It's quite deadly, if not treated properly!"

(the hive, heavy on his flesh, unsheathes its claws and digs into john and he feels an all-too-familiar rush of burning hot fever take hold of him once more and he knows that _this is it,_ he'd fed his own corruption enough in order to be _loved_ by it.)

"Then so be it," John laughs, and he throws up a salute (to the doctor's shocked face or to himself, he's not quite sure) and then -- there is --

Death is there, once more, joined by its countless compatriots, watching him as those men, so handy with their spades, shovel dirt onto his already-rotting corpse.

"So, tell me this time," John says, still smiling, even though he can feel his own body falling apart as it's buried, none of the other soldiers wanting to risk catching the typhoid bacteria still hot and heavy on his body even though, really, sharing a disease could be such an _intimate_ act. Taking mercy on the pitiful, the vile, the corrupt -- is that not love? Is that not love, as the Filth had shown him it could be, as it bent down to protect a writhing mortal-immortal like him under its rotting wings? "Does it hurt, being returned to nothing more than Rot?"

"We can't say much, yet," one of the black-robed figures says.

"Why not?"

"We're not here for you," another chimes in, and John sees them disappear, spirited away to play their morbid games with the other fallen soldiers of the battlefield, and then his ribcage is crushed by the weight of the dirt that'd been piled on top of his corpse.

\---

John Amherst wakes up.

His chest (newly-formed, newly-excreted from the bowels of those thousands of impossibly-hardy maggots that lay forever sleeping under his skin) falls -- half in disappointment, half because of the rising _panic of being left alone in the darkness again._

John Amherst wakes up, and his eyes snap open to a heavy, suffocating weight on his body, to freshly-packed dirt and stone and detritus and he tries to take in a breath that he doesn't need as he scrabbles for the surface of his premature grave and his hand breaks the top layer of the muddy soil like he is breaking through the surface of a crashing ocean of water and the wooden cross that'd been hastily planted above him is nothing more than leverage that crumbles and decays under his touch and he gasps when he is finally on level ground, heaving in breaths of thick, dusty air, and the flies swarm him like they're greeting an old friend-partner-companion, newly returned from a long vacation, and his head spins with thoughts of _why wasn't it enough why can't I be more am I not yet Who I Can Become?_

John Amherst wakes up, forces himself to his feet, and crushes the decaying wooden cross under the heel of his boot because he knows there is nothing greater than that writhing, all-encompassing Corruption that loves him as a God, loves him as a lover does, that sees him for Who He Is and Who He Can Become and he is so, so far from even grasping at that title he could almost _scream._

John Amherst wakes up and thinks that if even Death would turn him away --

(well, all he has to do is force death to constantly knock at his door.)

\---

(statement of luke venire, regarding an odd incident that occurred during his time working as an editor for the british book publishing house cassell and company. original statement given 30th january 1952. audio recording by jonathan sims, head archivist of the magnus institute, london.

statement begins.

i don't have much to say, really. i haven't thought about it in such a long time… but i know your institute specializes in scary stories like this. trust me, i'm not a very superstitious man. i'm half-tempted to chalk it all up to -- fate, or some odd coincidence, _anything_ other than the supernatural.

still. you want statements about strange occurrences. so here's what happened to me.

this was way back in… the summer of 1900, i think. turn of the century, and all that. i was young, looking to become a writer -- editor -- publisher -- something that had to do with books. i loved reading -- still do, of course -- and i wanted a taste of what it was like behind the scenes, y'know? and so when i saw the ad in the papers, i figured i might as well send in my application, and, lo and behold, i was hired on with cassell & co., a pretty well-established publishing house in london.

well, i found out pretty quickly that there isn't anything particularly glamorous about combing over dozens of half-baked story plots and manuscripts, trying to find which ones are good, which ones to throw out, which ones to write strongly-worded letters about to their authors. it's all just kind of boring, and we had a quota to meet and everything, so i couldn't even give each one the attention that i wanted to give it. and so you sort of slip into a rhythm, right? there must've been countless hidden gems that i just couldn't give the time of day. it makes me kind of sad, really.

but there was one book that was… weird. it was written by sir frederick treeves, and we knew this one had to be good, because he'd already gotten stuff published in the british medical journal and that's super selective -- and plus, there was still a lot of interest about the war that'd just ended in south africa, and my managers decided that it'd be an easy profit to make so we wrote out a contract and agreed to a deal and everything seemed like it would go just perfect, which is strange for a publishing company, haha. i personally saved a draft copy of the book -- i wanted to give it a good read of my own before it hit the shelves-- but, well… i'll get to what happened.

the first printed batch was an utter failure. it was fine when we locked up the night before -- but when we walked in the next morning, every single book was coated in this -- this gray, sickly-looking mold. it smelled like rotting flesh and we had to air out the whole building and i thought we were all going to have, like, some sort of lung disease just _breathing_ in that revolting air. nothing was salvageable. nobody owned up to spilling water or food on or near the copies-- and anyway, it just didn't seem right, y'know? mold doesn't grow that quickly -- ever. and it doesn't even get _that_ humid in london, so… definitely strange, at the very least.

the second batch was worse. the same thing happened: we locked up and everything was fine, but when we walked in the next morning the building and the books were literally crawling with maggots. like, personally -- until that day, i didn't even _know_ that maggots had a taste for books. they were everywhere -- dripping from the ceiling, clogging the sink drains, practically carpeting the floor. you couldn't walk without crushing them under your feet. we had to call in a pest control company to check over the place, and my managers were practically pulling their hair out when they were told that there wasn't any evidence of anything big even rotting in the building, so -- we threw out that printing and waited for the exterminators to do their work.

a couple days later, sir frederick treeves himself came in, wondering about the multiple delays -- and when we told him what had happened, i swear, his face went white. he muttered something along the lines of… i don't know. i think he said, "good lord. still alive, even in print?"

i asked him who he was talking about -- because, y'know, he wrote a book about the war, you figure a lot of people die but also a lot of people survive, right? but he just got this odd look in his eyes, told us to hold off before trying to print again, he had to read over his book again and edit a bit more.

when he gave us his third manuscript, he said that he had cut out a couple parts because they, apparently, weren't really relevant to the main stories in his book. the managers shrugged and sent it off to print -- even though at this point, people were starting to say it was treeves himself that was cursed -- but, strangely enough, everything turned out to be perfectly fine.

weird coincidence, right? at least, i passed it off as one. but then, a week or two later after our first successful printing, i was personally approached by a portly man with blond hair. he was holding one of the first-edition copies of _the tale of a field hospital._

he told me that he had heard that i was working for cassell & co., as an editor. i said yes, i was, but asked him who had told him that. he said it was unimportant -- but he was looking for the draft copy of _the_ _tale of a field hospital._ apparently, somebody had told him that i had an original. he wanted to get his hands on it.

everything about the whole conversation was really, really suspicious. i cautiously said that yes, i had a copy, but i wanted to keep it for myself. it _was_ an original, after all. i wanted to give it the time and attention that it deserved.

and then the man offered me his book in exchange. he said i could keep the envelope in there, too, if he could get his hands on my copy. i opened the envelope and it was practically _stuffed_ with money and, i'm not going to lie, my jaw practically fell open.

i don't have the draft copy anymore. i mean, come on. what else was i supposed to say?

i'm telling you this last part because, when i came out of my office with the book, the man had looked at it in the strangest way. and then, when he took it, he mumbled something to himself -- but i was close enough to hear what he was saying.

"can't you feel that filthy desperation, just seeping from between these pages?")

\---

His third dream is the dream of a restless man.

(has he ever been restful, really? can he rest, with the flies breeding within him, moving his carrion-corpse of a body, guiding him in the right direction, under the power of a mother that oh-so-carefully guides her progeny to where they can finally fester and grow?)

"You shouldn't still be… _alive,_ " the man says, with carefully-controlled shock, as John lounges back on the deathbed that'd been so specially prepared for him. A fevered thrill rushes through him when he feels ants starting to pick away at his decaying leg and he knows that even this doctor wouldn't be able to save it. He wants to tell the doctor to look at _him_ and nobody else, to see _him_ for Who He Is and tell him exactly Who He Can Become, tell him if there is anything greater than the love of the flies that fester and breed under his skin and in his necrotic, rotting, deathly _alive_ flesh, if only, if only, if only.

John offers him a sly smile. "I still don't know your name, dear doctor."

A shiver runs through the man, and John's eyes sharpen at the look of _disgust_ on his face. "Doctor Treeves, if you wouldn't mind. And you are…"

"I'm sure you know my name."

"Private Amherst, then," Treeves sighs. "A twin? Or -- do I really have the pleasure of greeting a man who's miraculously returned from the dead?"

"No, it's not a miracle," John says, airily, half-delirious from the gangrene and the high fever and the heady scent of rot that permeates the air of the military hospital. The groaning men around him have all gone curiously quiet. All that he can hear -- all that he's sure Doctor Treeves can hear -- is the buzzing of flies as the swarm circles his bed, crawls over his face, burrows into his skin and animates him like he's nothing more than a puppet serving the needs of the Filth. "I would be more inclined to call it... a boon, really."

Doctor Treeves lets out a shaky breath -- fumbles for his cigarettes -- and John's pupils dilate at the hint of flame that bursts from his silver-plated lighter.

"What _are_ you?" the doctor asks, almost wonderingly. "You… you're suffering from a case of gangrene too severe to be treated by any of the surgeons here --"

"And typhoid, still," John interrupts. "Wouldn't want to forget that."

"Still?" Treeves says, startled, before he recovers his composure with a hot breath of smoke. "That shouldn't be…"

" _I_ shouldn't be possible," John says, smugly.

"Of course not -- you came back from the dead, after all."

"No, not from the dead, either," John hums. He can already feel it calling, again -- that achingly close-yet-far pull of the Hive, singing to him, just barely out of reach, just barely out of sight. "I'm from..."

"Hell," Treeves suggests, and John laughs briefly before he's interrupted by a fit of wet, hacking coughs, yellow-brown froth dripping down his chin, newly-hatched maggots squirming on the bedsheets.

"The Crawling Rot," John says, still smiling. "The disease, the Filth, that lurks within us all. Haven't you heard its call? How can you stay away from -- from the _need_ to be accepted as one of the Hive?"

"I…"

"It's everywhere. The singing of the flies, the march of the ants, the mold that you pick off of your army rations whenever you bother to look." He wants that cigarette, with its smoldering-red tip and suffocatingly-hot smoke, to get _away_ from him. A rush of fever pulses hot in his head and John nearly cries, thinking about how _beautiful_ he would be once he was brought back into the flock of that singular Filth, deemed worthy of his god-lover's favor once again. "Tell me, Doctor Treeves. Can't you hear it? Don't you want to be a part of it -- don't you want to be a part of _me?_ "

"Are you a messenger from the Devil?" Treeves demands, and that thread of gorgeous fear linking the two of them irreversibly together is so _perfect_ John feels like he could just _die._

"Far beyond that," John smiles. "You have to say yes to the Devil. The Filth -- the infestation -- it slumbers within you already."

"Let it lie, for God's sake," Treeves whispers.

John's smile breaks into cracked, hysterical laughter in the absolute silence of the hospital ward.

"But, you see, Doctor… I am such a restless man."

(when he closes his eyes, three other men in the hospital collapse, simultaneously, from septic shock.

death skirts around john's slowly-stirring body.

he doesn't even open his mouth to ask, but death shakes its head, slowly, disapprovingly --

and john's limbs start to move in sync with the maggots that churn endlessly within him.)

\---

John Amherst wakes up.

John Amherst wakes up, and this time, his disappointment is practically palpable in the cramped coffin he'd been imprisoned in -- it doesn't cut like a knife, no, but it weighs on him like a stone, it coils hot and heavy in his gut and he can _hear_ the infestation singing to him so sweetly and even if it takes whatever mortal-immortality he has left, in that moment, he knows that he would give it all up for his god-lover-lover-god if it only asked him to.

He puts a palm against the lid of his coffin and it starts to rot under his touch. A thin smile rises to his face when he realizes that they'd used two sets of nails to try to trap him in there but, ah, they must've forgotten that in French, _couffin_ means both _coffin_ and _cradle_ and he pushes upwards with a strength that he didn't know he possessed and the wood splinters and cracks and he struggles his way up six feet of mud and dirt and detritus for the second time that year and surfaces in the middle of the night, in the midst of a mist of rain that he can already feel will seep into the soldiers' food supplies and cause fungus to bloom in their boots and if the image of their revulsion is delightful to the Filth, then, well -- he would find a way to make it just as delightful to himself.

John Amherst wakes up and he notices that every time he wakes up, it's getting easier to push himself onto his feet, almost like he's giving himself over to the writhing, crawling insects that have taken their rightfully permanent residence underneath his skin, like he's giving himself over to the Hive, letting himself be empty not because he wants to be but because he's _waiting_ to be filled up with all the love that he'll _make sure_ he deserves when it finally takes its final control --

(and when is it, really? if only he knew, if only, if only, if only --)

John Amherst wakes up, hears the Filth calling him, knows where he has to go, can hear the siren song of latent disease singing in his ears, walks past hails of bullets that shred his insignificant body and leaves a strange, oily sheen in his wake that catches fire all-too-easily and he is seen and hated and despised (but in the end, isn't _hate_ still a form of _fear_ is still more powerful than _indifference_ ) and no matter how tired he gets he knows he can't stop walking if he wants to be deemed worthy of Who He Can Become.

\---

(statement of adrien reve, regarding an old war story that their grandfather used to tell them about his time serving in the second boer war. original statement given 28th july 2001. audio recording by jonathan sims, head archivist of the magnus institute, london.

statement begins.

look. i don't know if i'm even in the right place. i mean… this is all second-hand, but all the assistants seemed happy enough to walk me in here and have me write something that i'm _guessing_ will just be filed away or regarded as a big hoax or my granddad remembering something wrong because like, everybody was half-sick or drunk or delirious back then, but i mean…

i dunno. he seemed pretty convinced of everything, and i remember when i was way younger he would have friends over and all of them would talk about what'd they'd _seen,_ out there.

but -- i'm dragging it out, i'm sorry. shouldn't be wasting your time.

the story goes like this:

my grandfather was assigned to be a sentry in one of the blockhouses along the perimeter of the land the british army had conquered in south africa. that summer, it was _hot._ there had been a light, misty rain for a couple of days, but it didn't bring any relief -- it was still just as hot as ever, except now there was an extra problem with the mold and humidity and damp seeping into literally everything they owned. all the soldiers were getting frustrated with each other. everything was totally miserable.

just as the rain had started to give way to a clear, dry blue sky, a _creature_ had appeared, approaching the perimeter they'd set up from the north, where some sort of… military hospital was set up? some kind of strongpoint, i think. there'd been a lot of problems with it -- that's why my granddad remembers it so well. apparently, there'd been a huge outbreak of typhoid there that'd been raging for weeks, and a ton of people that the doctors had deemed stable were suddenly getting wound infections and sepsis and all that -- but anyway, the point is that the hospital was practically _begging_ them not to send their sick there because they probably wouldn't get much better.

the creature approached slowly, with a jerky, dragging step, almost like it had a broken leg that hadn't set right. it was wearing a ragged khaki uniform, but its helmet was missing. it was literally black with the flies that were swarming around it, crawling on it like the thing was practically _made_ of insects, and the plants literally withered away under its steps, turning black and brown with mold and rot that shouldn't have had any right to be growing there. it didn't have a rifle -- or any kind of weapon at all-- but there was a weird _confidence_ in its steps, like it knew exactly where it was going, and every single eye and every single gun in that blockhouse was pointed directly at it as it shambled across the field.

and the worst part is that -- it was _humming._

the humming was loud -- loud enough to drown out the flies, or, or harmonize with them, or something, i don't know, my grandfather never described it in detail because he would always get sick just _thinking_ about it. and all of his friends remember the same thing, so i mean -- i'm a pretty scientific person, i get there could be some group psychological issues or mass hysteria or something, but i don't know, y'know? i mean, he told it so convincingly. even if it wasn't real, his memories of it somehow are -- and i don't know if i'd rather deal with some monstrous creature that causes mass hallucinations of it or a real, walking, rotting corpse-monster made out of writhing flies and maggots that spreads mold to anything even _close_ to it. i mean, what if a person had gotten close to it? would they have become -- something just like it, or would they start molding like a peach that's been left out for too long? would it _hurt,_ or would it be too late for that person to feel pain, having been taken over like one of those walking zombie carpenter ants, the spores forcing its limbs to move even if its mind just wants to stay safe with the rest of the colony?

would it, ironically, be endangering them even more if it did?

i don't know. i don't really want to keep thinking about it.

the thing had approached the blockhouse -- and one of the soldiers had fired a warning shot at it, and the flies had all spread apart and _reformed_ into a vaguely-humanoid form, right in front of the door, staring up at the window that all of the soldiers were staring down from.

it had knocked. politely. three times. nobody moved. 

and then it _laughed,_ and its laugh was like a chorus of buzzing, singing flies, and it said, "i like the cooperation, here. very lovely. you should count yourself lucky -- there's a bigger population i have to take care of a couple miles away."

and then it kept walking south, until it disappeared into the horizon. 

half of the men were ready to dismiss it as a hallucination. the other half weren't quite sure.

the next day, though, the blockhouse received news from the military hospital.

the grave of private john amherst had been disturbed in the middle of the night. his body had disappeared, and the wood of the cross and coffin that he'd been buried in were practically crumbling away, like they'd been rotting for dozens of years, even though they'd only been planted in the ground a couple days before.

and -- apparently -- that was the _second_ time private amherst's corpse had had a… restless night, as the letter put it. a couple months ago, he'd apparently died of typhoid, before reappearing among the ranks of the gravediggers as good as new.

the authorities chalked it up to foul play, and were planning to grant him an honorable discharge if he showed up for the _third_ time. i mean, what else can you do, right?)

\---

His fourth dream burns hot, in fire and smoke and the suffocatingly-heavy smell of cigarettes in the muggy summer heat.

(he isn't even there to watch the first sparks burn down the home that he'd so lovingly constructed, one of the many pale imitations of the haven of filth that he'd only caught the faintest glimpses of in those half-waking moments between life and death, dream and sleep --

still.

ivy meadows had been his favorite. something about the mutual loneliness of the ants that lived there had led them to create a real sense of community. with john at its head, so seen and loved and trusted by all of his followers, creamy yellow pus dripping from the ulcers in their mouths and the hollows of their skin, oh, it could've been _perfect_.)

"Are you satisfied, yet?" he calls as he steps out of his car, the Hunters freezing in their steps. He can smell the iron-stench of blood that clings to their hands and clothing. The flies can smell it, too -- they swarm around the pair, searching for a breeding-ground that didn't exist just yet.

"Are _you_?" the man barks. "Creating a fucked-up nest of disease like this…"

"It was a family," John sighs, and the man stiffens, as if he's getting ready to pounce. "It wasn't senseless death -- it wasn't just for the fun of it. I don't bite like the two of you do."

"We can still burn you down," the woman says, warningly. She holds out a hand to stop the man from jumping. Her eyes spark with -- with -- a certain kind of bloodlust, a spark that John wants to extinguish so, so badly -- and then there's the way the two look at each other, with a certain kind of respect and confidence that only two trained Hunters can ever have, and, in that heartbeat, John knows that this would be a fight that neither of them would win or lose.

(something in their shared glances makes john's chest twist and he's not sure why.

the love of the hive is eternal. the love between humanity is fragile, broken, splintered and shattered and john is no -- longer --)

"You won't, though," John says, stifling anger and hurt and that cripplingly new loneliness (now that he'd seen -- now that ivy meadows and all of those loyal ants, the infestation only just starting to reveal itself in Who They Could've Become, had been burnt down to the ground) under a coldly cordial smile, an outstretched hand. "John Amherst, one with the Filth. Pleased to make your acquaintance."

Neither of the Hunters approach him. The man narrows his eyes, suspiciously. "And why not?"

"I'm more trouble than it's worth." John lets his gaze sharpen, lets his mouth twist unnervingly, lets the silence drag on long enough for the words to sink in. "You cannot kill me in a way that matters. The two of you, though… are still desperately mortal, aren't you?"

"And you're showing mercy?" The woman doesn't drop the threat of the lighter. The man has one hand on his gun, the other on a heavy hunting-knife half-sheathed at his side. "I don't believe that for a second."

(the writhing _thing_ in john cries out for mercy -- lack of mercy -- take them, you can't die as long as you're in the service of your god-lover-lover-god --)

"You won't believe it if you stay here much longer," John says, the pulsing-throbbing of the flies giving him a splitting migraine, the rush of fever in his head driving him to do anything other than stand there and think, longingly, _if only, if only, if only._

The Hunters lope off without another word. John steps back into his car, slamming the door of the red compact shut, stares up at what could've been a beautiful home, and when he can't hold in his despairing scream any longer all that comes out of his decaying throat is the endless buzzing of countless flies as they pour from his mouth and fill the car and sing of _shame_ and _failure_ and John doesn't think he's ever felt so close to Who He Was in tens of dozens of years and that writhing thing in him _twists_ like a knife and he doesn't know why, can't figure out why.

(the human is alone, though.

and the corruption that still festers inside john doesn't want him to be.

but kennedy's eyes spark with their own sort of flame, they pulse with a revulsion that fills that emptiness inside john with that thread of _fear_ and _hatred_ that john swears, swears is still more powerful than _indifference_ \--

before they sharpen and harden with a degree of composure that john is taken aback by and the flame that bursts from the exterminator's lighter is filled with purposeless, chaotic death rather than purposeful, orderly life and john has never felt the searing bite of pain so sharp before and he knows that it's a direct consequence of his mercy, his weakness, upon the mere sight of a love that john couldn't bear to feed the filth with.)

John feels every single last maggot-mouth digesting the charred ashes that remain of his pitiful body as it smokes and smolders on the street, feels every last fucking cell of his body get put back together by a marching regiment of loyal ants as they carry in rot and filth and froth from one of those pale imitations of the haven of Filth he's desperately seeking entrance to, and the disappointment doesn't cut or crush or twist, it _festers._

Death, that omnipresent, omniscient figure, doesn't even bother to watch.

\---

(and yet -- despite everything --)

John Amherst wakes up.

John Amherst wakes up and every part of his body that is still tenuously connected to his sense of Self, his sense of Who He Is and not Who He Can Be, sings with a haunting, stinging pain, even though he looks carefully over every inch of his exposed skin and still can't find even the slightest trace of a burn scar.

John Amherst wakes up and the emptiness inside him squirms, writhes, convulses, contorts itself into the shape of a dull, heavy _hatred_ (of what? of who?) and he knows that either he sates the desperate hunger of the Filth or he locks himself away from that mythical realm of Who I Can Become In Order To Be Loved forever, forever, forever --

(all is fair --

should love be a war?)

John Amherst --

(wants to, doesn't want to, does he want to be)

\-- is awake,

and he pushes himself to his feet.

his hair is greasy, he realizes, with a start. he tries to push the oily strands out of his face, but only manages to get his hands covered in this odd, iridescent sheen that's oddly sticky, that smells like roadkill and burning rubber and sickness, that coats his face and fingers and attracts the attention of flies that don't leave him no matter how he struggles to bat them away.

he thinks -- but it's a brief thought, a thought that flits through his head and smacks against his skull and falls to the ground like a dying insect.

am i -- a thing -- that people -- can love?

The maggots lying asleep in his flesh start to churn and John can see them, a crawling river of Rot and Filth and Decay just under his practically-transparent skin, ridges and pustules and cysts rising and squirming and breaking from within him and John Amherst wakes up and thinks about Who He Is and John Amherst wakes up and his hands are stinging and he's not sure if it's a phantom pain from his last dream or if it's because of the flies stirring underneath his nails and burrowing into his bones and he's not sure which one is worse and John Amherst wakes up and he can hear the Corruption, the Corruption, that god-lover-lover-god, calling to him and him specifically and he knows that it's starving, he knows that it has to feed, and he picks himself up off the ground and knows that he is so close he is so worthy of the infinite love of that entity that had chosen him worthy of the legacy and Eternity that the infestation wants that the infestation can give him that the infestation can, can, can, if only, if only, _if only_ \-- !

\---

(statement of laura star, regarding a failed extermination attempt in her neighbor's house in bromley. original statement given 10th october 2011. audio recording by jonathan sims, head archivist of the magnus institute, london.

statement begins.

i'd called the exterminators because the _smell_ had gotten so bad. normally, i'm a very private person -- i mean, i wouldn't want anybody bothering _me_ when i'm just trying to live my best life -- but from next door, there was always this terrible smell, like rotting flesh and sickness and i thought my neighbor had _killed_ someone, honestly.

i never saw anyone other than him come in and out of the building. i guess he was happy to be alone -- with nothing but an ocean of ants that quite literally spilled out the door every time he bothered to open it.

and so, half-convinced that he was keeping a dead body in there and letting the ants dispose of the evidence, i was careful to note the few days that i knew he would be out of the house. it was every monday, wednesday, and friday -- at eight in the morning, on the dot, he'd leave. i don't know where he went, i just know that he was gone. and so, one morning, i steeled my nerves and called kennedy pest control and told the guy on the line that i would pay him for whatever expenses needed to be paid for. i didn't think i would _really_ be paying. i thought he would find some evidence of a crime in there and then the police would take care of the rest.

then i sat back at the window -- and waited.

his van pulled up. he opened the door, after a bit of hesitation. and then he must've seen the ants, because he immediately walked out, got a pesticide sprayer out of the back, and walked back in again.

a couple minutes passed… i think it was eleven in the morning? my neighbor normally came back late at night -- i could always hear his car pulling up to the driveway, a screeching, rusting mess of a thing. but there it was: a red compact, rumbling up the road, and my heart sank because of course i picked the _one_ day that he finished his business -- whatever it was -- early.

he stepped out of the car, just in time to confront the exterminator. they argued for a bit, and then i saw him literally pick kennedy up by the neck and i panicked and ran to grab my phone because i thought that if he wasn't a murderer already, well, he was about to become one, huh?

when i got back to the window, he was on fire.

i dropped my phone, and the screen literally shattered and broke, and my heart dropped into my stomach because i wouldn't be able to call the police and i hadn't exactly wanted my neighbor to _die_. i can't get that goddamned image of him convulsing in the flames out of my head, and the smell was sickening -- like sun-baked roadkill and rotting flesh, underscored by this unmistakable scent of disease that permeated the air for weeks. i washed all my clothes, my bedsheets, my pillows -- twice -- and i ended up having to replace everything, anyway, because the scent just wouldn't get out of them.

but what happened next was worse.

the minute that i thought he died -- i mean, he stopped flailing around and just dropped, limp, to the ground -- maggots and ants and flies swarmed his body. i don't think i've ever seen so many insects gathered in one place, all of them writhing, squirming, all of them desperate to -- to -- i don't know _what_ they were doing, i just know that the buzzing was intolerably loud and thrummed in my head and gave me a migraine and the movement of the insects was almost hypnotic in how rhythmic and planned it all seemed to be. they didn't move like insects. they moved like a well-trained army of soldiers. every single creature had its own role to fill, and, death be damned, it would fill it.

and then all the froth and filth and rot that the insects had brought to the corpse of that man -- _consolidated,_ into a single whole.

what rose from the spot where his corpse should've been was a being that _should not have existed._

the thing sat up. its skin was oily and his clothing charred, but other than that, it didn't look like it'd been burnt to death at all. it got to his feet in a single, fluid motion. the flies that hadn't become a part of its -- its new body, i guess -- were still buzzing around its head, landing in its hair and crawling across its face and it didn't even bat an eye.

and then it got into its car. the slam of the door echoed through the silent neighborhood.

i never saw it come back.)

\---

A fifth dream --

comes

with silence.

(faces stare at him in horror, disgust, revulsion, and he pulls at the threads of their fear and lets them _feel_ the infestation that they'd been suffocating under their fake, fake, fake promises of love and trust and all those things that humans could never truly understand the way that the corruption did, all those things that only his god-lover-lover-god could give and take and will upon its favored and he _will_ become one of those favored, filling his role, death and devil and god be damned. flies swarm his head and circle his head like a halo. ants crawl up his ankles and circle his neck like a noose. his touch is feverish and hot from the churning of the hive as it works miracles within his body and the indomitable, inevitable, crawling rot drags pitiful human bodies together, forces them into the shapes that they were always meant to be, makes them belong to the infestation the same way that he belongs, belongs, belongs.

john croons lullabies and folksongs as he walks the streets of the town. the people's hearts all beat in unison -- a singularity, a union, a love that john has never quite felt in such great strength before and as he ascends the pulsing throne of corruption he is at the very center of it all, basking in the warm sun of fear and feeling so, so close to Who He Can Become, Who He Must Become. fear-energy courses through his veins as he hears the moans of the infected, their disgust with themselves and Who They Are, their masks of humanity melting away along with their flesh as they morph and fuse and Become, Become, Become.

he wonders if to be loved is to be feared, or if to be feared is to be loved -- and then, he wonders if it even matters, really, if he's already been crowned as beelzebub, lord of the flies, ruling his followers and fighting against himself and does it matter, does it matter, does it matter when he's absolutely hated, despised, condemned to hell either way --)

"Does it hurt?" Death asks.

John is suffocating.

He knows this for a fact.

He lies there in that dry, crushing darkness, staring up at Death, for a long, long minute -- a minute that stretches out for hours, days, centuries, as the wet rot eats away at him in pulsing waves of destruction-creation-destruction-creation, as he becomes a modern-day Prometheus at the whims of his god-lover-lover-god, buried in a concrete grave not even six feet deep, not even fit for the corpse of a pitiful human, and John is so, so much more-less-loved-hated -- so much more-less-dis-re-gar-ded --

"...No," John finally responds.

Death doesn't smile, but it tilts its head, ever-so-slightly, just enough for John to see it and recognize it and know exactly what it's trying to imply.

He peels back his lips in a poor facsimile of a smile.

"Not for me."

**Author's Note:**

> quantum libet - medical shorthand for "as much as you please."
> 
> anyway hi. i used up my 'side character in tma you get overly attached to' card on john amherst and it's kind of unfortunate. this was a lot of fun to write though! it's very interesting for me to think about how the corruption feels like the opposite of the lonely... it always preys on people who are desperate for love/companionship/etc. and so. i dunno i kinda just took john and ran with it, haha. sorry this was really gross. i remember a couple points when i was writing where i distinctly thought to myself "hey man. this is really fucking gross" but i didn't stop so. lol
> 
> umm a couple notes about this, in no particular order:  
> 1\. i started to write this on the same day as one of my friends introduced me to [temponaut timelapse](https://www.youtube.com/user/TEMP0NAUT) and in order to get myself into the mindset for working on this i literally would just watch a couple of their videos back-to-back and i think it's really changed me, like, as a person.  
> 2\. writing this brought me back to when i took forensics senior year of high school and my teacher let real life raw chickens rot outside for a couple weeks when we were learning about decomposition. i was literally the only student who wanted to actually go touch them so i got to hold rotting chicken meat (and maggots) in my hands (with gloves ofc) and i remembered the rest of the class gawking at me as i casually just sorta brought it around for people to look at and take notes on. maybe temponaut timelapse didn't change me actually maybe this is just how i am.  
> 3\. john amherst is gay. the "sly smile" he gives treeves? walking up to dekker "coyly?" having a fly crawl across his eye and not even blinking, just for dramatic effect? we popping the biggest bottles when this motherfucker breaks outta the concrete and finally gets some therapy <3


End file.
